Morph shape with changing position

Trying to do this kind of morph in After Effects is a real pain, even with shape layers because the points on a path move to their new positions in a straight line. On the other hand, if you create your shapes in Illustrator and use the Blend function to join them together, you can expand the blend, release to layers, move all the new layers to the top of the layer stack, import as a comp, trim the layers, then sequence the layers to create a perfect kind of morph in just a few minutes.

I know that explanation was impossible to follow so maybe these two ancient tutorials I put together will help. I've been doing this kind of "morph" for many years.

and this one:

Nothing to fix. You have simply hit the limitations of the Reshape effect right out of the gate. What you want to achieve is simply too complex for its simple algorithms. You need a more advanced commercial morphing plug-in or create the transition completely differently. Since your artwork appears to be all vector-based with simple gradinets and solid color areas it would not be too difficult to re-create it with shape layers and animating the shape of the paths for instance. in any case, trying to morph it seems like the wrong approach, at least if you don't have access to advanced plug-ins.

Mylenium